Ride Along 2 - The Brothers-In-Law Need to be Stopped

Directed by Tim Story. Produced by Will Packer, Ice Cube, Matt Alvarez, and Larry Brezner. Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. Release date: January 15, 2016.

It feels like every year we get one or two buddy cop movies that just serve to remind us that we probably don't need to do buddy cop movies anymore. How often, at least lately, have these things worked? And even when they do work, how many of them are anything more than a passable distraction? One of the higher grossing ones in recent years was Ride Along, which paired Kevin Hart and Ice Cube together. It didn't work, but we didn't know that at the time. There are stranger combinations that have been successful. But it made something like 6x its budget - something to do with its target audience being underrepresented in Hollywood - so two years later the cast and crew returns for another round.

Of course, knowing that the "comedic" pairing doesn't work didn't stop the sequel, nor did it stop it from basically just doing the same thing the original did, but now with diminished returns, reused jokes and plot threads, and an overall feeling of laziness and boredom from all involved. Now a probationary police officer, Ben (Hart) is finally ready to marry Angela (Tika Sumpter). Angela's brother, James (Cube), doesn't really like Ben, but Ben earned his respect in the first film after the two teamed up to solve the crime of Nobody Cares.

So, it might come as a huge surprise that Ben once again has to earn James' respect, this time by coming with him to Miami in order to take down a drug lord named Antonio Pope (Benjamin Bratt). Didn't we just do this? Of course we did! But why would the filmmakers try to be creative when the option to be lazy exists? This time along, they're joined by a local homicide detective, Maya (Olivia Munn), and a hacker, AJ (Ken Jeong), in hopes that adding more people will increase the number of laughs. Unfortunately for us, that didn't happen.